Liu Xiaobo wins Nobel Peace Prize, as Beijing Planned

Mingde Reservoir from 126 along its north side. As lovely a stretch of road as can be found in Taiwan.

Taiwan Congratulates dissident Liu Xiaobo says the headline of an article which collects reactions to the award from the President, the KMT, and the DPP, as well as individuals. The President also called for Beijing to release Liu. Quite a turnaround for someone who spent his salad days in opposition to the growth of democracy in Taiwan.

Jottings from the Granite Studio ripped the CCP -- and took a gentle poke at the Nobel Prize Committee -- in a witty post on the prize award.

As of 8:30 this morning, the domestic media is simply repeating the official rebuke from last night and then…deafening silence. I think the idea here is “If I don’t say anything, everybody will think it was the dog who farted not me.” Always a winning PR strategy.

The fact is that the CCP doesn’t need to do this anymore. More than one commentator in the past 24 hours has referred to the debacle as a “PRC own goal.” If government hadn’t been so freaked out by Charter 08 and sentenced Liu Xiaobo to prison (on December 25, 2009 figuring that the Western world would be too deep in egg nog to care…how’s that plan working out right about now?) then the Nobel committee wouldn’t have given this guy the time of day. Not to take anything away from Liu’s obvious set of large brass ones or his and his family’s sacrifice, but this Prize is as much a testament to the CCP’s continued paranoia and basic stupidity when confronted with even the most mild of statements for systemic or institutional change as it is about any one man.

"PRC own goal" -- a goal in which you stupidly and mistakenly score against yourself, thus creating a point for the other team. I think there's a glimmer of insight I'd like to tease out here.

Let me point out something. Prior to the award, China warned Norway against giving Liu the award. This blog was among the many commentators who noted that this all but sealed it for Liu. Indeed, the pressure has been on a long time.

Nobel Institute Director Geir Lundestad told the Norwegian news agency Norsk Telegrambyrå (NTB) that China's Deputy Foreign Minister Fu Ying met Lundestad in Oslo this summer to deliver the message. Separately, a Hong Kong visitor who met Norwegian officials earlier this year told Asia Sentinel that "the government folks there said they were under tremendous pressure from the Communists not to give the Peace Prize as long ago as last November. It is an outrageous example of Beijing interfering in the internal affairs of small countries."

Do you think the leadership in Beijing didn't know that pressure would only produce the opposite results? Try this on for size: Beijing was trying to ensure that Liu got the award.

If they didn't want Liu to win, why did they keep Liu front and center in China-Norway relations for almost a year?

With the ground broken on a Chinese dissident, Beijing and Taipei can then approach the Committee for Nobel approval of the Ma-Hu 2011 Nobel Peace Taiwan Sellout Lovefest Tour. The Committee, having affronted Beijing the previous year, will naturally want to mend fences. And what could be better than a joint Ma-Hu Peace Prize for "calming tensions" in the Strait? (what a boost for Ma going into 2012 too). Why do you think Ma came out so strongly for this and called for Liu's release in the massive publicity wake of the prize, but when DPP Chair Tsai urged Ma to talk to PRC negotiator Chen Yunlin in Dec of last year, only a weak statement was issued?

And as a special bonus, if it is given at the same time next year, it will occur around Double 10 Day (ROC) and the PRC National Day (Oct 1).

UPDATE: Several other motivations for wanting Liu to win have been suggested, including preventing Gao from getting it.

UPDATE II: Some excellent rejections of this in comments below.
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Daily Links

• Don asks the same question I always do in post on academic work that laps up Beijing propaganda.
• President Ma vows that KMT will take responsibility for its past.
• David collects responses to Arthur Waldron's call for the opposition and the KMT to celebrate National Day together. Waldron is a longtime China/Taiwan observer and strong supporter of Taiwan.
• Taiwan stops "activists" from engaging in more shenanigans in the Senkakus.
• Fashion designer insists he is Taiwanese even as Ma tries to appropriate him. Good clean fun.
• Former President Chen's detention extended two more months. Thank you, KMT, for keeping Chen quiet and out of the way and enabling Tsai Ing-wen to reconsolidate the DPP and go forward to dominate the last few elections. Now Chen will remain behind bars for the duration of the 2010 election season.
• Commonwealth Magazine, as always, has a useful piece on the debate over universal values in China.
• Despite reports, updates say no Taiwan fishing vessel has been hijacked off Somalia.
• Human-driven global warming is reducing miracle rice yields.
  

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Tuesday Odds and Ends

How about that smoking ban? Draconian, and citizens can turn each other in for a few extra bucks! I'd like to thank the government for saving us from indoor smoke, the last health threat since illegal trash burning, factory toxic emissions, oversized automotive engines, and coal-fired electric plants have all been eliminated here.

Speaking of the environment, the EPA is insisting that people take seriously its proposed rule that scooters turn off their engines at stop lights, then start them up again when the light turns green. This brilliant idea is actually up for expert review, despite overwhelming objections to it.

Fun fun fun as once again, our longtime anti-democracy President Ma Ying-jeou and mass murdering authoritarian Chinese President Hu Jintao are linked to a Nobel Peace Prize. The idea is parodic, but Taiwan News points to the hollowness at the core of the claim to cross-strait "peace" in the making:

Where a genuinely cross-strait peace process would end could be an open question, but any process that would have legitimacy in today's democratic Taiwan must begin with recognition that the majority of the Taiwan people still want peace with assent and without coercion, with democracy and without repression and with creativity and without preconditions or predetermined conclusions.

Indeed, any "peace" arranged by the KMT and CCP behind the backs of the 23 million Taiwan people will not "end hostilities" but is likely to trigger considerable domestic unrest within Taiwan and could even pave the way for genuine and drawn-out conflict throughout East Asia in the future.

Such a "peace" will not be "honorable" and Hu and Ma will be no more deserving of Nobel Peace Prizes than would have been Hitler or Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Premier Edouard Daladier, whom as leaders of "democratic" nations, reached agreement with the "rising" Germany's dictator over the heads of the democratic Czechoslovakian government and its president Eduard Benes to expedite annexation disguised as "peace with honor."

In our view, if Hu truly wishes to be known as a "peacemaker," he should first dismantle the 1,400 missiles and other offensive weaponry deployed across from Taiwan, revoke the belligerent Anti-Secession Law, cease opposing Taiwan's membership in all international organizations and drop the "one China principle" as the precondition to talks.

For his part, Ma should consult with opposition parties and civil society representatives to formulate a domestic consensus strategy for formal talks with the PRC, affirm that the result of any talks must be ratified by national citizen referendum in Taiwan and reaffirm his opposition to the coercive Anti-Secession Law, cease the illegal KMT-CCP "dialogue" and halt unilateral "deregulation" measures that would lock Taiwan into the PRC economy and hollow out the Taiwan people's right of free choice.

Submission is not "peace." When they gave away the Czechs to Hitler in '39, they engendered there broken treaties, burning cities, and 50 million dead -- all the result of "peace with honor" -- and China has territorial claims on all the nations around it, some relatively legit, some completely fanciful. But today's fancies are tomorrow's headlines....

On Jan 9 last week, FAPA sent this around:

"...during the first week of the new 111th Congress, long-time Taiwan supporter Rep. John Linder (R-GA) introduced a resolution urging the Administration to establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Similar resolutions were introduced in 2005 and 2007 by then Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who has since retired from Congress. Additionally, the resolution calls for end to the U.S. One China Policy and Taiwan's full membership in international organizations.

Ah, we can dream. But as a dream it makes a nice antidote to the unreality that has pervaded the Bush Administration's self-congratulatory horse manure on the Loch Ness Monster Bigfoot Status Quo.

Two legislative moves: first, the Taipei Times headline said today that our legislature stirred from its lethargy long enough to pass a bill legalizing gambling in the offshore islands.

The amendment stipulated that local governments must hold a referendum before building casinos.

The referendums would only need to win support from more than half of the voters participating in the referendum.

The bill stipulated that casinos be located within international resorts that include an international hotel, tourism facilities, international conference halls and shopping malls.

It also called for the government to create a US$900 million fund for island development (read: spraying concrete across precious natural resources while supplying central government funds to local patronage networks). The usual suspects protested, including the Catholic Church, busy protesting against other people's gambling while operating Bingo halls. Gambling in the Penghu is just more of the Cargo Cult dream that uncountable hordes of Chinese are simply standing there in Fukien in long lines from the coast, holding wads of cash just waiting to invest here and "save Taiwan." The legislature also approved the free trade zone at the airport. The new law allows foreign labor but prohibits Chinese labor, something that many feared it might permit. Aborigines, staunch supporters of the KMT, took it on the chin, of course. UPDATE: Penghu, longtime KMT country, has already scheduled a referendum for mid-year.

Two links you should be looking at. First, the redoubtable and always excellent Brian Kennedy has a long piece in this month's AmCham Topics mag on the prosecutors. It appears to be a direct response to the recent letters that scholars have published condemning the apparent politicization of the prosecutors here. It is useful and informative, but does not directly grapple with the issue of politicization of the prosecutorial function in a substantive way. For example, anyone remember the press conference called by eight prosecutors to claim that they would follow the Chen case to the end, as good as a promise to prosecute Chen Shui-bian no matter what the evidence? UPDATE: Speaking of politicizing the prosecutors -- this is unbelievable -- for the 63rd annual law day, the prosecutors' office staged a skit that looks an awful lot like it was slyly aimed at Chen Shui-bian, with prosecutors playing the parts. My man Taiwan Echo has a description and vids on his blog. Words fail me. UPDATE 2: News report is here (Chinese) UPDATE 3: Taipei Times article.

Also, in case you haven't heard of it, the Reed Institute at the U of Oregon has a fantastic collection of 19th C Taiwan imagery and writing.

Finally, the Taipei Times had a piece on the revival here of Democrats Abroad. If you are not yet a member, sign up for the Taiwan Group at Dems Abroad and come to the organizational meeting on Jan 17 at Larry's Pizza (2 pm). Only registered members at Dems Abroad will be allowed to vote in the organizational elections. We have a fantastic slate of candidates for supervisory positions, although I may be biased, since I am one of them. Once you register at the website and log-in, you can get info on all the candidates.

[Taiwan]

One Problem, Two coverages: Tibet and Taiwan

WaPo has an article on the recent offer by China to negotiate with Tibet, and the usual noises of criticism by China's colonial officialdom of the Dalai Lama.....look at the opening paragraphs:

Less than 24 hours after China offered to meet with an envoy of the Dalai Lama, state-controlled news media on Saturday kept up their campaign of denunciations of the Tibetan spiritual leader.

"The behavior of the Dalai clique has seriously violated fundamental teaching and commandments of Buddhism, undermined the normal order of Tibetan Buddhism and ruined its reputation," the Communist Party's People's Daily newspaper reported.

China Daily, the official English-language newspaper, published an interview with Lahlu Tsewang Dorje, a Tibetan who fought on the Dalai Lama's side in a failed 1959 uprising, according to the paper, and later became a top political adviser to the Chinese Tibetan authorities. "I think the Dalai clique is our enemy and we should fight until the end," he was quoted as saying.

The tone of the articles raised questions about China's seriousness in preparing for negotiations with the Dalai Lama over restoring stability to Tibet, which has essentially been under government lockdown since deadly rioting in Lhasa, its capital, on March 14.

Rather than stepping back from its hammering of the "Dalai clique" for instigating the violence in an attempt to split the country and sabotage this summer's Olympic Games, China continued to hit hard. "The Lhasa March 14 incident is another ugly performance meticulously plotted by the Dalai clique to seek Tibet independence," said the Tibet Daily, another Communist Party newspaper.

And of course, the reporting on other nations' reactions and on the "analysis" offered by WaPo:

The official New China News Agency reported Saturday that the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the head of the European Commission had all praised China's offer to meet.

"It's too early to tell if the meeting will produce results or is just for PR purposes in advance of the Olympics," said Mary Beth Markey of the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet.

Note the sympatico tone towards Tibet, the detailed citing of officialdom's position on the Dalai Lama, in which every bombastic word is captured, followed by the analyst who implicitly argues that the whole 'talks offer' is just pro forma nonsense for public consumption ahead of the Olympics.

Contrast that with the media presentations on Hu Jintao's "peace offer" to Taiwan last year (my post on some). Large numbers of newspapers used positive terms -- "peace offer", "olive branch"......Hu "reached out to" Taiwan's people. Consider the NYTimes presentation on the "peace offer" of a few days later, after it was rejected by Taiwan....

Mr. Hu's remarks were the latest sign of a more sophisticated Chinese policy of trying to reach past Mr. Chen's hostility to appear nonthreatening to Taiwan's voters. But Chinese officials remain vitriolic about Mr. Chen himself, irritated by his persistent advocacy of greater independence for Taiwan.

Through more than seven years in office Mr. Chen has inched closer and closer to a formal declaration of independence without actually changing the island's Constitution, flag or legal name, the Republic of China.

''Taiwan is an independent, sovereign country; Taiwan is not part of China, nor is Taiwan a local government of the People's Republic of China,'' Mr. Chen said during the interview, reiterating a formulation that he has been using lately to the irritation of Beijing officials.

In an interview last month, Wu Jianmin, a top Chinese diplomat for two decades and the president of the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing, which is affiliated with the Foreign Ministry, said of Mr. Chen, ''His problem is he loves to make trouble.'' He added, ''People don't like tension, and he likes tension, and whenever he can he does what he can to increase tensions.''

Instead of positives about the Dalai Lama, we get negatives about Chen Shui-bian, including a needless quote from a Chinese diplomat. There is no suggestion in any of the media presentations on this issue that Hu's offer might be pro forma. At most, they observe the precondition which Taiwan will not accept: that Taiwan is part of China. That such a precondition might be made in an insincere way is a question never raised by any of the media pieces, though bloggers all over the world were able to see it clearly. This is totally unlike the Tibet article, where insincerity on China's part is practically assumed -- indeed, in the NYTimes article about Hu's "peace offer" the only suggestion of insincerity is about the DPP:

Mr. Chen's continuing criticisms of Beijing have made Mr. Hsieh appear more moderate. That has prompted questions here of whether Mr. Chen and Mr. Hsieh, who have worked together for two decades, are secretly coordinating a policy of seeming to take divergent policies toward the mainland to ensure Mr. Hsieh's election.

Clearly the independence side in Taiwan's politics has a serious problem with its international image.

[Taiwan]

To Change China?

In the run-up to the 2000 Taiwan election, the Washington Post featured a short piece by a reporter named John Pomfret, an interview with then-presidential candidate James Soong. Pomfret presented Soong, at that time a lifelong opponent of democracy, as a democratic reformer. I responded with a short letter protesting this mischaracterization of Soong's political career, which the Post duly printed.

Fast-forward to 2008, and Pomfret has established himself as a major Beijing correspondent. There is no question of his abilities or wisdom in interpreting China. Yet as his recent blog post in the Washington Post blog section shows, Pomfret is like almost every other Beijing correspondent when it comes to writing on Taiwan, displaying an unerring ability to reflect Beijing's propaganda themes rather than develop a rich and independent perspective on the island's politics. This problem will only worsen as Taiwan is re-subsumed into the idea of "China" as KMT-CCP links grow over time and the island's identity is smothered....

Pomfret's main idea is that Taiwan offers a democratic model that can change China, and that the meeting between Vice-president Elect Vincent Siew and China's leader, Hu Jin-tao, is A Really Good Thing. As he says:

This is good news, but not just for the economy of the region. It's also good news for those who care about the preservation of the world's only majority-Chinese democracy (Taiwan) and the prospect of political change in China.

Why? The reasons will be drearily familiar to readers who have come to know and love the media bogeyman Mad Chen^©, the Wrecker of Worlds. Pomfret's accusations are basically a run-down of Beijing/KMT talking points:

....So Chen resorted to a policy of what the Chinese liked to call "creeping independence" which basically meant seizing every opportunity to enrage Beijing....

...The keys to Taiwan's security and - critically - to the preservation of its full-throated democracy, [Ma] argued, are good relations with Beijing, not the constant tension Chen seemed to crave...

....means that after eight years of failed leadership by President Chen Shui-bian, who bungled the island's security and its economy....

We've beaten to death here Beijing's successful isolation of corporate lawyer and democracy supporter Chen as a "radical' for using referendums and democracy, while the media refrains from similar criticism of Beijing for its missile build-up and threats to plunge the region into war over Taiwan's democracy. I'll skip the economic lecture about the 'bungled' economy; readers will know what the more complex reality is.

This brings up the real question. Is the "warming" a good thing for Taiwan and for democratic prospects in China. Pomfret argues "yes." It almost makes a kind of sense, but that is only because everything important to assessing the answer to that question is missing from the Pomfret's discussion, as it generally is from media presentations on the Taiwan-China relationship.

Pomfret's presentation omits a number of key facts. For example, Pomfret never tells the reader that the KMT and Beijing have been coordinating policy to suppress the island's democratic development for the last few years. For example, after the most recent KMT Chairmanship election, the new Chairman, Wu Po-hsiung, immediately announced a visit to Beijing. Pomfret also leaves out Ma Ying-jeou's long career as a anti-democracy stalwart, and his ideological beliefs about China. Also missing are the chilling invocations of Singapore's one-party state as a model for Taiwan by a number of major KMT politicos, including future President Ma.

What happened in Hainan Island was a bit of political theatre aimed at the global media -- Vincent Siew was seated with the satraps of Hong Kong and Macao, a clear indicator there! The real negotiations are ongoing between the two parties behind the scenes, and have been for many years.

When representatives from two parties that share a pro-China ideology and despise democracy meet, the long-term prospects for democracy dim, not brighten. Neither the Chinese Nationalist Party in Taiwan nor the Chinese Communist Party in China has any interest in deepening or broadening democratic development in Taiwan. On the contrary, both have powerful vested interests in a hollowing out of democracy on Taiwan. If Taiwan's democracy really does have the potential to effect positive political change in China, you can be sure that it will be a priority of Beijing's leaders have that democracy neutered.

What does that suggest? The sad fact is that as long as the KMT is running Taiwan, China is far more likely to change Taiwan than Taiwan is to change China.

[Taiwan]

A Forum for Constraints

The conventional wisdom is accurately portrayed by Keith Bradsher of the NYTimes in an article on Vice-President Elect Siew's meeting with China's bigwigs at the recent Boao forum in China...

Mr. Siew and President-elect Ma Ying-jeou will take office in Taipei on May 20 with a strong electoral mandate to reduce the hostility that has existed with Beijing for most of the past six decades. But Taiwan’s leaders and officials on the mainland each face strong domestic pressures not to make too many concessions too quickly or too easily.

Those domestic pressures are likely to limit their room to maneuver and force them to pursue limited agendas at first, focused on issues like tourism and charter flights, political analysts said.

Ma wants talks rapidly after he takes office on May 20. Because of the massive pressure on Ma from investors who expect to make big $$ when Chinese money floods in -- if it floods in -- and the expectations of locals -- Ma must make a deal.

Thus, I think the "constraints" argument is weak, especially by comparison with the pressures on Ma. Ma's KMT controls the military, the judiciary, the police, the bureaucracy, most major businesses, etc. Where is the constraint on Ma? The threat of street demonstrations? I think that he can buy off most objections simply by making the money flow; if promises of cash can get him elected.... and let's not forget, the real dealing is going on in the negotiations between the KMT and Beijing that no one is writing about....

There was a minor flap about Siew using the "Tai Bao Zhen" -- the document issued to Taiwanese who travel in China. Bruce Jacobs, the well known Taiwan scholar, said that Siew's was not actually stamped, a concession by Chinese authorities. Siew was criticized by the pro-Taiwan types for selling out.....

AP writes of the meeting, looking at the economic aspects:

[Ma's]His goals for Taiwan include 6 percent annual economic growth, a jobless rate no higher than 3 percent, and per capita income doubling in eight years to $30,000. The economy grew 5.7 percent last year, though the average for Chen's eight-year presidency will probably be less than 4.5 percent.

The core of Ma's economic program involves public and private investments in a number of long-term infrastructural and industrial projects - investments that could well push Taiwan's budget deficit farther into the red.

At the forum, Siew invited the cash-rich Chinese to invest in some of the projects. Taiwanese officials said they expressed some initial interest.

Ma has also promised to bolster Taiwan's flagging tourism industry - an area that could generate immediate revenues, if Beijing agrees to a large-scale tourist outflow. According to Ma's plan, 1 million Chinese would visit Taiwan each year, generating $1 billion in revenues.

"Taiwan's high-tech and other exports could suffer a decline amid the global economic slowdown, but the drop would be partially offset by tourism," said Norman Yin, an economist with Taiwan's National Chengchi University.

Chinese tourism needs better air service to flourish, and the extension of existing holiday charter service to weekends - endorsed by Hu - seems a good step in that direction. Ma has also promised to push for the launching of regular commercial flights, though he does not believe they can start before the second half of next

Here's one use for Chinese money above -- getting it to invest in projects in infrastructure projects in Taiwan.

It's interesting how Taiwan's tourism industry is "flagging." Where do these writers get this crap? Is there no Google in the AP offices? The China Post recently reported:

In 2008, the number of tourist arrivals, as of yesterday [5 Apr], posted an annual growth of 14.29%, twice the target growth of 7 percent.

Of the inbound tourists so far this year, those from South Korea recorded the highest annual increase of 42%, followed by a 35% gain for those from Hong Kong and Macao, and a 27% surge for tourists from Malaysia.

Given the sharp growth, the number of inbound tourists is expected to not only exceed the historical high of 3.72 million recorded in 2007, but also break the 4 million mark to hit a new high this year, according to the Tourism Bureau.

In other words, our tourism hit a historical high last year and is booming this year. But according to AP, it is "flagging."

[Taiwan]

Reports from places great and small

Out in Oklahoma, an opinion piece comments on the election in 'the Asian nation most like our own.'

In a recent interview, Joseph Wu, director of Taiwan's Washington office, told me popular support for the murkily defined status quo in PRC relations exceeds 80 percent.

Americans must be attentive to Taiwan's needs, and here's why. Taiwan is the world's leading per capita consumer of American agricultural products. As Wu said, Taiwan has "been a consistent supporter of the U.S. in security concerns. ... Taiwan is the number three supporter of construction, reconstruction and aid in Afghanistan. In container security we are the best U.S. ally."

AP reports that vice-president elect Vincent Siew will meet with Chinese leaders and perhaps Hu himself at an upcoming forum:

Vincent Siew will not discuss any sensitive political issues if he meets Chinese President Hu Jintao at the three-day Boao Forum, which opens Saturday in Hainan province, his spokesman Wang Yu-chi said.

"Mr. Siew will meet some officials there, but a meeting with Hu has yet to be confirmed," Wang said.

But Taiwan's United Daily News quoted unidentified Chinese officials as saying authorities had agreed to the meeting so Hu could use the occasion to discuss matters of common interest with Taiwan's incoming government.

Although this article still offers the "China and Taiwan split in 1949" nonsense, it does contain one statement that is absolutely wonderful:

Beijing refused to deal with outgoing President Chen Shui-bian for the past eight years because he rejected China's insistence on unification with Taiwan.

Not many statements on affairs here are so absolutely clear. Note also the use of the term "unification" and not the historically erroneous "RE-unification." Tom Plate, who has an opinion piece on the election in the Japan Times, totally misses this in an abusive and unconsidered set of comments:

With this stunning result, you could almost hear a collective sign of relief sweep across Asia. The triumphant KMT was led by the debonair Ma Ying-jeou. For months he had been expected to win the presidential race. But the resurgent troubles in Tibet had forecasters wondering whether the party that was so committed to negotiation with Beijing would be able to maintain plausibility with Taiwan voters when the world's TV cameras were suggesting that Beijing didn't seem to be in favor of negotiating with anyone right now.

Taiwan answered the clubs of Tibet with votes for change — for dramatic movement away from confrontation. With the thundering certainty that only a decisive ballot box result can offer, the vote heard around Asia was a call for sanity, civility and stability.

..."the party that was so committed to negotiation with Beijing." The DPP was also committed to negotiation with Beijing -- it is just that as AP correctly notes, and Plate ignores, Beijing blew off the DPP completely. Oh yeah, history, wonderful stuff. It is one thing to note that the KMT and certain pro-KMT observers in the US cast the election as "a call for sanity, civility, and stability" but it is quite another to reproduce KMT talking points as analysis. Pathetic. Plate's commentary also shows how Ma himself benefits from a nifty little foreign media personality cult, whose latest manifestation is here: Ma is debonair. Supporting democracy is, well, you know, just so working class......

[Taiwan]

UN/Hu Offer Round up

The Yomiuri Shimbun published an article on the "peace offer" from Hu, written by a Japanese reporter, that totally follows the Chinese line. Although discussion of economic growth is thick, there is no mention of the military threats....

During the Congress, Hu revealed China's policy on Taiwan, which took a relatively soft line, as symbolized by his use of the phrase "peaceful development" during his speech. Hu did not repeat a phrase pertaining to China's possible use of military force against Taiwan used by then General Secretary Jiang Zemin in his speech at the Congress five years ago. Instead, Hu urged Taiwan "on the basis of the one-China principle" to join talks on "a formal end to the state of hostility" and "reach a peace agreement."

However, Hu's call was not directed at Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian, who flatly rejected China's one-China policy. Rather, Hu was eyeing Chen's successor, who will be elected in the coming presidential election in March 2008.

This is the usual uninformed and unimaginative interpretation of Beijing's offer. In case, if anyone was thinking that Hu's position indicated a softening of China's drive to annex the island, the week after the Party Congress the local Taiwan policy thinktank held a meeting to dispel any doubts, as reported by the China Daily, a Chinese media organ:

"The mainland will never allow anyone to make Taiwan secede from China in any name or by any means," said Zheng Lizhong, executive deputy director of the Taiwan Work Office of the CPC Central Committee.

He said the Chinese mainland would continue to promote the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations and peaceful reunification.

"We will sincerely rally the Taiwan compatriots to strive together for the prosperity of the Chinese nation," he said.

Zheng made the remarks when attending the meeting held by the Cross-Straits Relations Research Center on studying Chinese President Hu Jintao's report to the 17th CPC National Congress.

More than 50 researchers on cross-Straits relations attended the symposium.

Chinese Presidents Hu Jintao said in the report that the forces for "Taiwan independence" were stepping up their secessionist activities, seriously jeopardizing the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations.

"The mainland side is ready to conduct exchanges, dialogue, consultations and negotiations with any political party in Taiwan on any issue as long as it recognizes that both sides of the Straits belong to one and the same China," he said.

He also proposed, on the basis of the one-China principle, to discuss with the Taiwan authorities on the formal ending to the state of hostility between the two sides, signing of a peace agreement and constructing a framework for peaceful development of cross-Straits relations.

"We will make every effort to achieve anything that serves the interests of our Taiwan compatriots, contributes to the maintenance of peace in the Taiwan Straits region and facilitates peaceful national reunification," he said.

Note the claim -- "one and the same China." This appears to specifically exclude a two-China solution to the issue that might enable them to take advantage of the existence of the ROC to obtain wiggle room for concessions from both sides. Nope -- Hu's position is that the PRC and China are one and the same. This is exactly the same position China has come out with year after year, and will continue to come out with until they grow up on the Taiwan issue or end up killing a lot of innocent people. Further, what is Hu's comment against the regular flow of vitriolic hate of Taiwan from Chinese officials such as Jia Qinglin? Hu's remarks don't stand by themselves, but represent a pattern common in Chinese politics, where the Great Man offers beneficence and conciliation --while at the same time, the underlings make the vicious threats that represent the real position of the Great Man.

A Zogby poll commissioned by the GIO found levels of support for UN entry in Japan similar to those of the US (Zogby US results):

In response to a question about whether they would support the nation's entry into the UN under the name "Taiwan" if the campaign is supported via a referendum, the positive figure jumped to 81.2 percent, with 12.6 percent disapproving.

Asked whether Japan should respect a decision made by a majority of voters in a democratic way, 89.2 percent said yes, while 7.7 percent said no.

However, in response to a question that specifically mentioned China's opposition to Taiwan's UN membership, 63.5 percent of respondents said they were in favor of Japan helping Taiwan to gain UN membership, while 29.5 percent opposed such help from Japan.

EU top diplomant Solana once again expressed concern that maybe the Referendum would upset peace and prosperity in East Asia. Apparently military buildups don't have that effect, at least for diplomats in the EU. Xinhua gleefully reports:

Javier Solana, European Union top diplomat, expressed here on Thursday his concern over Taiwanese leaders' comments on the Chinese province's application for UN membership.

"I have noted with concern the comments made by Taiwan's leadership on October 24 concerning Taiwan's application for UN membership under the name of Taiwan," Solana said in a statement.

"The EU has a substantial interest in peace and stability in East Asia. It has a particular interest in the continued prosperity and security of Taiwan and in the maintenance of peaceful relations across the Taiwan Strait," he said.

The fundamental position of the EU is that the Taiwan question must be solved peacefully through cross-Strait negotiations between all concerned parties.

On the plus side, the Taipei Times reports on EU parlimentarians who support Taiwan:

In related news, 84 members of the European Parliament released a joint statement on Thursday to express their support for the nation's UN bid.

The members representing various political groups, who have gathered in Strasbourg, France, for the European Parliament's plenary session, said in their statement that Taiwan is a sovereign state that has never been governed by the People's Republic of China and that it is wrong and unfair for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to claim that Taiwan was part of China and deny the nation eligibility for membership.

They said that, in a report on China issued last September, the European Parliament had called for representation for Taiwan's 23 million people in international organizations, but that Taiwan still remained excluded from most of these organizations.

Calling Taiwan a full-fledged democracy with a highly developed economy that could make valuable contributions to the international community, the group urged the EU and other UN members to seriously consider Taiwan's application for UN membership.

The UN entry referendum proceeds apace, with the Central Election Commission assigning to the same day as the election...

[Taiwan] [media] [US] [China]

Hu Ignored in Taiwan

Commentator Ting-i Tsai has another good piece in the Asia Times on the Hu "peace offer"

Hu's olive branch, therefore, is consistent with Hu's previous practices, in the minds of some observers. At a summit with Taiwan's opposition Kuomintang on April 29, 2005, an agreement to sign a peace accord was among some of the points of consensus.

To some observers, Hu's remark might seem fresh and friendly, but others disagreed. "Hu's speech looks more like setting a framework. For the upcoming five years, a precondition [one China] would be required for political negotiation," said a former senior official at the Mainland Affairs Council, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, "Party-to-party negotiation would be the format. This is a regression [of China's friendliness]."

Former communist Ruan endorsed the former official's argument, and contended that "technically, the hostility is only between the CCP and KMT", suggesting Hu's proposal was for the KMT but would not be applicable to the governing Democratic Progressive Party.

Tsai also presented some local views of the issue, emphasizing its totally ho-hum nature to the locals. Massive, massive kudos for Tsai mentioning that the CCP and KMT are interwined like snakes mating in the spring. Why that pertinent fact fails to find mention in the international media is a mystery to me.

Even worse for Beijing, Ma Ying-jeou, the presidential candidate of Taiwan's opposition party Kuomintang (KMT), which has interacted closely with the CCP since 2005, rebuked Hu's remark by arguing that Taiwan's future should be determined by the island's people, and the decision is neither associated with CCP nor could the island tolerate any CCP interference.

The worst news for Hu was probably the reactions of people in Taiwan. Beijing has tried to win the hearts and minds of the island's residents, but few in Taiwan paid attention to China's political drama, and even fewer were aware of Hu's apparent olive branch to Taiwan.

In downtown Taipei, Amy Kuo, a 36-year-old office clerk, noted that she had not heard the term "17th National Congress" of the CCP.

Yeh Hung-yuan, a 34-year-old sales manager of a medical machinery company, had some understanding of the meaning of "17th CCP Congress" but was not aware of Hu's remarks. "It would be either threatening Taiwan independence or talking about an unrealistic 'peaceful unification'," he guessed.

Jesse Chuang, a 27-year-old doctorial program student, said he had no impression of Hu's remark. "I only remember that Jiang Zemin didn't clap his hands [after Hu's speech]," Chuang said.

I got curious about whether Tsai was right on the extent of the ignorance, so I started asking my night class students about Hu's offer (it would have been pointless to ask the day class of 18-22 yr old kids). Out of fifty or so adults in their twenties and early thirties, most -- hell, all but one -- had no clue that there was a Party Congress or that weighty words on the subject of Taiwan had been uttered by His Huness. It seems sometimes that "Taiwan consciousness" is not consciousness of Taiwan, but unconsciousness toward everything else....

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US Acknowledges "Peace Offer" is Bogus

Radio Taiwan International had a short piece on an interview of State Department official Thomas Christensen, whose remarks on Taiwan caused such a stir. In it Christensen seems to acknowledge that, indeed, there were people in Taiwan who might think the "peace offer" was not a good idea.

The US Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Thomas Christensen has urged China's President Hu Jintao to find a way for dialogue with Taiwan that is acceptable to both sides. Christensen made his remarks in an interview with the Singapore-based United Morning News.

Christensen said the United States welcomed Hu's recent call for talks with Taiwan aimed at ending hostility across the Taiwan Strait. But he said the United States was aware that some people in Taiwan would not accept President Hu's precondition for talks....[snipped]

Christensen said the United States hopes that both sides can find a way to bridge their differences to work out a peaceful solution to the cross-strait issue. He called on China to be willing to engage with Taiwan's democratically-elected leaders.

Although the paper was not exactly a regional giant, it is published in Chinese. Good to see the US pushing China, in however, small and inoffensive a way, to drop its hostility to the legitimately elected leaders of Taiwan and talk to them. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama gets a medal in the White House -- because nothing he can do can have any real-world consequences.

Christensen, whom you might recall made a speech that caused so much commentary in the media a few months ago, believes that credible messages from the US caused the DPP to fail to gain as much as it might have in the 2004 legislative elections here in Taiwan. Oy ve.

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AP: Peace Offer not Directed At Chen

AP strikes once more with a brilliant analysis of the Hu Jintao "peace offer."

Alexander Huang, former second-in-command at the Taiwanese government agency responsible for implementing China policy, said Hu's comments were made with the full knowledge that Chen will be leaving office next May, two months after Taiwanese voters elect a new president.

"(They were) intended for the Taiwanese ... presidential candidates, who both have a more moderate approach to China than President Chen Shui-bian," he said. "The Chinese Communist Party has decided not to deal with Chen anymore, so Hu's Taiwan proposal ... is not meant to be carried out before (Chen steps down)."

Andrew Yang of Taipei's Council of Advanced Political Studies agreed.

"Hu's remarks were directed at future elected leaders in Taiwan," he said. "The call for a peace treaty, the insistence on the one-China framework, these things are not on the agenda of the current Taiwanese leadership. And that means President Chen Shui-bian."

Gosh, what deep insight! And the media wonders why blogs are so popular. Peace offer not aimed at Chen? What next? AP: "Sun rises in East, Sets in West."

For seven years China has refused to talk to Chen Shui-bian. One wonders why, at this late date, anyone would imagine that Hu's words were aimed at Chen. Or anyone in particular -- earth to AP: Hu's words were aimed at the INTERNATIONAL MEDIA. That's you, AP. Note that AP says they were aimed at the other candidates -- that would be Frank Hsieh, longtime democracy advocate with the DPP, and Ma Ying-jeou, whose party is already working closely with Beijing (will that ever appear in the international media? Naw). Hsieh will never accept Hu's demand for surrender -- AP's analysis nowhere lets the reader know that the precondition for negotiations is that Taiwan surrender itself to China, nor that Hu announced no concrete peace measures.

Ma Ying-jeou meanwhile is described as a moderate:

Ma, a former mayor of Taipei, is even more a China policy moderate than Hsieh. His party supports eventual unification with the mainland, though Ma himself wants Beijing to dismantle the estimated 1,000 missiles it has aimed at Taiwan as a precondition to any negotiations.

Observe that AP does not mention that the DPP has been calling for the removal of the Chinese missiles for years. Instead, it credits that position to Ma -- a position his party rejected only a year ago!

But just to show you how completely disconnected from reality AP is, let's look at the last paragraph of this "analysis"....

Early polls give a 10-20 point advantage to Ma, but some analysts believe Hsieh's formidable campaigning skills and razor sharp intelligence could eventually put him over the top.

If you are dumb enough to believe the opinion polls in pan-Blue papers, you are dumb enough to believe anything. If there is a 10 point separation, it is most probably in Hsieh's favor.

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Bradsher on the "Peace Offer"

Keith Bradsher of the NY Times has a thorough article on surrender demand "peace offer" from China's Hu and the reactions in Taiwan and China. The article is Beijing-centric in many ways, but it has a couple of important observations.

President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan denounced Thursday a peace overture from President Hu Jintao of China that has received a cautious welcome here from both candidates in presidential elections to be held next March.

"It is very clear now that if we were to sign such a peace treaty under the framework of the 'one China' principle, then I think this would mean, for the 23 million people of Taiwan, a treaty of surrender," Chen said in a 90-minute interview Thursday at the presidential palace here.

Ma Ying-jeou, the presidential candidate of the opposition Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, and the front-runner in polls, was more receptive to Hu's overture. In a telephone interview later Thursday he said: "In general, it is in conformity with our party's platform."

The opening frame squarely places the blame on Chen, where China and the KMT want it (and the DPP too, but for different reasons). In recent weeks the international media have been offering a new frame for Mad Chen^©, in this case that of the future Rasputin who is going to retain secret -- and presumably, malign -- influence from behind the scenes over the direction of the DPP even after Hsieh ascends to the Presidency. Note that is generally presented in negative terms. For example, Bradsher writes at the end of this article:

Chen resumed the chairmanship of the Democratic Progressive Party on Wednesday to lead it through the elections, and that has revived questions of whether he plans to play a continuing role even after the next president is inaugurated on May 20. Mainland Chinese officials have been deeply suspicious that if Hsieh is elected, Chen will continue to exert great influence behind the scenes, much as former general secretaries of the Chinese Communist Party, such as Jiang Zemin, have continued to wield influence.

Chen's influence is likened to that of a former Communist dictator operating in a one-party state! In case the NY Times has forgotten, Taiwan is a democracy and the DPP is democratic party that conducts primaries to determine its candidates and has extensive and often public debates on policy, on an island where the media has no controls. The idea that Chen could be some kind of Jiang Zemin is laughable. Bradsher presents no information that might make the reader question the slant -- offered by officials of a party with the desire to snuff out Taiwan's democracy, and with a vested interest in misrepresenting Chen.

The contrast between Taiwan and Tibet could not be stronger -- the Dalai Lama gets far more sympathetic coverage than Chen Shui-bian, who is the legitimate and directly-elected president of a democracy allied to the west. Good work, guys. *sigh* Just today the AP article mentions the Dalai Lama's worldwide reputation as a moral leader, a very positive frame. Imagine if in every article on Chen, a positive frame about his position as the legitimately elected leader of a democracy was contrasted to Hu's ascension to leadership over the dead bodies of the Tibetans he had killed during his stint as an official there.....

The paragraph above also does a number on Ma Ying-jeou -- citing him as saying that yes, surrender is our party's platform. Those in the US Establishment who think Ma is going to cooperate with them are in for a big surprise if he ever takes the presidency. Naturally Bradsher does not mention that Ma's party is cooperating with Beijing, which explains why Ma welcomes the proposal. The cooperative relationship between the KMT and Beijing receives little attention in the international media, but it is on of the most important strategic facts of local politics.

Bradsher moves on past a discussion of the surrender demand "peace offer" that shows he realizes it is unaacceptable to a free people, though in quite muted tones, to observe:

Hu's remarks were the latest sign of a more sophisticated Chinese policy of trying to reach past Chen's hostility to appear unthreatening to Taiwanese voters. But Chinese officials remain vitriolic about Chen himself, irritated by his obstinate advocacy of greater independence for Taiwan.

Through more than seven years in office, Chen has inched closer and closer to a formal declaration of Taiwanese independence from the mainland, without actually changing the island's Constitution, flag or its legal name, the Republic of China.

I love the loaded language here. Chen is "obstinate." Yea, he obstinate -- so was Gandhi, Martin Luther King, George Washington, Steve Biko, Simon Bolivar....all who aim at great things must be obstinate. Meanwhile, authoritarians who point missiles and more missiles are never described as "obstinate" in their desire to annex an island they have never owned. Bradsher also describes Hu's conciliatory tone as China trying to appear more appealing to Taiwanese voters, but does not explicitly mention that no concrete steps toward peace were taken. After all, if China wanted to appear peaceful, all it has to do is remove the missiles and aircraft facing Taiwan. You won't, however, see that analysis printed in the international media. UPDATE: "obstinate" has been replaced by "persistent" in the other version of this piece which I linked to above. Apparently there are two on the IHT site. UPDATE II: Maddog reminds me that the title of the new piece is "...dismisses Hu's overture." It's not an overture when one side demands that, as a precondition for talks, that the other side surrender.

What is this peace offer, then? It's just another variation on the normal Chinese tactic of Eff You! in negotiations. Remember when the Chinese consecrated a bishop for their fake Catholic Church just as the Vatican was arriving for negotiations? Remember when they sent an ambassador to India who, ahead of talks, claimed that a whole Indian state belonged to China? Couching a surrender demand as a peace offer while at the same time expanding the military strength facing Taiwan is another example of this behavior.

Bradsher cites Ma Ying-jeou, who has cottoned on to the fact that China's missiles don't play well in Taiwan and has been trying to push his party to this very centrist and very rational position for the better part of two years:

Ma, the Nationalist candidate, said his party maintained its position that there is one China, but that Taiwan and the mainland have different interpretations of what this means. He also said that talks with the mainland should be about a peace agreement, not Taiwan's future, which should be decided only by people in Taiwan.

"The mainland side should remove the almost 1,000 missiles targeted against Taiwan, and they should do it before we start negotiations," he added.

When Ma went overseas a while back and complained about the missiles, he was forced to repudiate his position when he got home. It is a measure of how mainstream Taiwan independence has become here that the KMT feels it must adopt the same position as the DPP on this issue: no negotiations without an end to the threats, and the Taiwanese in control of their own future. Nothing less is now acceptable to the majority of Taiwanese.

This shows what Ma's actual election strategy is: hollow out the DPP platform by adopting versions of its positions on sovereignty issues, while advancing the position that only the KMT can save the economy. This might have a good chance of succeeding, if the KMT's economic policies were not so blindly unimaginative. A Common Market with China? That is the one thing locals, especially the working class, fear the most......if Ma offered them less China, and more future, he could have the locals eating out of his hand. Fortunately the KMT's political identity is backward-looking, toward the idealized "China" that is simply the candy-coating over KMT authoritarianism, and toward its developmentalist economic past. KMT political thinkers are congenitally incapable of developing any vision of the future that doesn't look like the past.

Of all the reporting that opposes "Hsieh the moderate vs Chen the radical" only Bradsher seems to have grasped the possibility that the contrast between the two might well be political theatre.....

Chen's continuing criticisms of Beijing have allowed Hsieh to appear more moderate and appeal to centrist voters. Hsieh has backed an expansion of nonstop charter flights between Taiwan and the mainland, for example, and held out the possibility of regularly scheduled flights

That has prompted questions here of whether Chen and Hsieh, who have worked together for two decades, are secretly coordinating a policy of seeming to take divergent policies toward the mainland to ensure Hsieh's election.

Not only does this key bit of political theatre make Hsieh appear more moderate than Chen, it also keeps the attention of Beijing and its junior partner the KMT tightly focused on Chen Shui-bian, the lame-duck President whom the Bad Guys are madly obsessed with. So intent is the KMT on Chen that at times it appears to forget the actual DPP Presidential candidate is Frank Hsieh.....

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